From Packers players to doctors, Rick Harnowski has been tattooing for 50 years

Rick Harnowski has been a tattoo artist for 50 years in Green Bay.
Green Bay Press-Gazette

Buy Photo

Signed photos of athletes tattooed by Rick Harnowski, including many Green Bay Packers players, are displayed alongside Harnowski's awards in his shop, Tattoos by Rick on Military Avenue.(Photo: Adam Wesley/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo

GREEN BAY - It takes all of five minutes to realize how silly it is to ask Rick Harnowski if he can talk while he tattoos.

With the needle buzzing at the studio on Military Avenue, the man who has made Tattoos by Rick a Green Bay institution for 38 years tells tales like he inks. Flawlessly, colorfully and with unmistakable, old-school style.

“Here’s a story. This is a true story …” he says from the custom-made stool in his studio embossed with his motto, “Eight days a week,” and signed by some of the world’s top tattoo artists.

His son, Josh, who also tattoos full time at the shop, pokes his head in through a side door and laughs.

“It’s usually a big b.s. session in here, so he’s used to talking while he’s working,” Josh said. “It’s like a barbershop.”

Harnowski has heard his share of stories from people who have spent time in his chair over the years — stories of patriotism, addiction, faith, family, battles fought, loved ones lost and demons overcome. He knows the meaning behind tattoos of teachers who are fully sleeved, doctors with elaborate back pieces, police officers, veterans, state troopers, nurses, musicians, bikers and breast cancer survivors.

But the best story just may be Harnowki’s own.

He’s marking 50 years of tattooing with a retrospective exhibit of his work. “Rick Harnowski: The Needle Has Moved” opened Monday and runs through Nov. 2 at the Bush Art Center at St. Norbert College in De Pere, where the intricacy of his art is showcased on 8-foot-tall banners.

It’s a career that has earned him recognition around the world and in more than 70 publications, including International Tattoo Art magazine and a pull-out centerfold drawing for Skin & Ink in 2009.

His work is so distinctive he once had a customer who was out West visiting a tattoo shop when the owner took one look at his arm and said, “I bet Rick Harnowski did that tattoo.” A man with a full body suit Harnowski spent hundreds of hours tattooing won a tattoo competition so many times in Sturgis, South Dakota, they eventually disqualified him. Back in the days when he had a guestbook at the shop, he counted clients from more than 20 different countries, some bringing him Russian whiskey flasks and rare carvings from Africa as gifts.

“‘Go see Rick ...’ That’s always the word in the locker room when the new players see the tattoos on the old players. ‘Where did you get that?’ ‘Go see Rick’ is what they say,” Harnowski said.

You have to ask him to talk about the accolades. He’s more apt to point out his favorite sign in the lobby, the one that sums up the business at hand — “Notice! Due to the current workload, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off" — than he is to name-drop.

“I think he’s one of the most humble tattoo artists in the world of his status,” said his son, Dan, who does graphic design and consultations at the shop. “There’s a lot of egos in the tattoo industry.”

“It’s all about the work leaving here and the people being satisfied,” Rick Harnowski said. “You don’t need to be out there saying, ‘I’m the best.’”

Buy Photo

Rick Harnowski works on a tattoo on Kevin Casey of De Pere in his shop, Tattoos by Rick. Harnowski has been tattooing for 50 years in Green Bay. A retrospective exhibit of his art opens Monday at St. Norbert College.(Photo: Adam Wesley/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

'So I hung around with the biker crowd'

Harnowski was 11 when his family came from Poland to the United States in 1963, just two days after President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. His family, separated by World War II, reunited with his mother’s sisters in Green Bay.

He got thrown into the Catholic school system, where he was teased by the other kids because of the language barrier.

“The people that accepted me were the rougher bunch,” he said. “So I hung around with the biker crowd, the hot rod guys and all the guys that were getting drafted to Vietnam. I was always doing art, something that always interested me. So all those guys introduced me to the homemade tattoos, and it all kind of began from there.”

When he was a junior in high school, he saw an ad on the back of a magazine during study hall. It was a picture of Abraham Lincoln. “Draw me,” it said. He sent in his drawing and won a scholarship of three years of correspondence courses that included study in pencil, charcoal and oil painting.

He had done his first tattoo, a cross, on himself at age 15 in a friend’s garage attic. “And from there it was pretty much history,” he said.

His parents weren't exactly thrilled.

“They freaked out,” he said. “I already had like three tattoos, and I always wore a long-sleeved shirt in the summertime. … Well, what else can you do? It was too late.”

He got his start tattooing bikers in the ’70s, following them around Green Bay, Milwaukee and Chicago. When he opened his first shop on Walnut Street in 1980, he was one of only three or four in the state. Milwaukee was a hub, because of the sailors coming through the Great Lakes, but the city eventually banned tattoo shops in the city limits due to concerns over unsanitary conditions and hepatitis.

Harnowski became instrumental in getting legislation passed requiring tattoo artists to be state licensed. His was the first licensed shop in Green Bay. He made countless trips to Madison to propose statewide regulation, opening the doors for shops throughout Wisconsin.

“Put a license on the wall and then people felt more comfortable walking into the place knowing it was safe and inspected,” he said.

He spent 17 years tattooing on Broadaway in the ’80s and ’90s before moving to his current location in 1997. He’s been tattooing some of the same people at all three locations across four decades. Eighty to 90 percent of his customers are repeat business. A few have logged as many as 500 hours in his chairs.

“In my business, it’s not the location,” he said. “They’ll find me if I’m hiding in the attic. They follow me.”

'Something of your inner self on your outer skin'

He’s known for his line work — the difference between a tattoo that stays looking good over time and some of the modern watercolor tattoos that require recoloring, Harnowski said.

“When I look at some of my work from 30 or 40 years ago, never been touched and looks as good and you can tell what the tattoo is, that’s good quality work. I pride myself on good quality work, longevity of a tattoo, where it’s going to look good long after the tattoo has been done, because your skin is forever changing,” he said. “A lot of that modern tattooing that some of the young people do, it tends to run together and you just end up with a big blob. That’s what separates me from most of the other people, I believe, is quality tattooing.”

When his kids were still in diapers and had gone to bed, Harnowski would go in the basement to his soldering station and make needles and stencils until midnight. Back then, there were no presoldered needles. Not much of waiting list, either. Most of his appointments were the next day. Today, Josh and Rick are booking into February and March.

It’s customers of every age from every walk of life.

Kevin Casey of De Pere ended up at Tattoos by Rick after admiring the tattoo of a woman he saw at the YMCA. “And now here I sit,” he said, as Harnowki worked on a radioactive symbol on his bicep. “Everybody knows a guy (who tattoos) ... I went with reputation.”

When former Packers offensive lineman Nick McDonald was cut from the team in 2011, he was on a plane to the New England Patriots less than 24 hours later — before his tattoo was done. He ended up flying back to Green Bay, and Harnowksi worked until midnight to finish it.

Jerry Parins, the retired security chief for the Packers and a longtime friend of the shop, just got his first tattoo at age 79.

One of the great pleasures of a half-century of tattooing — “It seems like the blink of an eye,” Harnowski says — is all the people he’s met.

“Usually when people come up to me they do one of these,” he says, pushing up the sleeve on his shirt. “I can’t remember your name, but I’ll recognize the tattoo. I can pinpoint about the year. That always happens. ‘Hey Rick, remember this?’ And you’ll be in the grocery store or whatever."

There's a sense of pride that comes with each of those encounters.

“I always from the get-go claimed tattooing is an art form. We’re just working on a different canvas," Harnowski said. "People in the old days would say, 'Why are you doing that to your body?' Well, you're decorating your house. You're hanging a picture in your house. Your body is your temple. You're decorating your temple. Something of your inner self on your outer skin."

Buy Photo

Rick Harnowski's custom-made stool in his Tattoos by Rick studio was a surprise gift in 2017 at the international tattoo convention he hosted in Green Bay.(Photo: Kendra Meinert/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

'I'm here eight days a week'

Both as an industry and a culture, tattooing has thrived since Harnowski’s early days. It’s now a billion dollar industry, and 47 to 48 percent of Americans are tattooed, Harnowski said. Women who began by getting little “beauty tattoos” after the Vietnam War now sport extensive sleeves.

The technology has changed, too, with artists working with disposable cartridges that allow them to easily pop in a different needle size.

“I’m the old-fashioned guy. I like using my old machines and the old technology,” he said. “This young generation is taking the tattooing to the next level. There’s realism. The tattoos look so real. It’s just unbelievable.”

What the new generation has in technology, inks and a mainstream culture thanks to TV reality shows like “Ink Master” and “LA Ink,” Harnowksi has in experience, a work ethic, a clientele that feels like family and 20 international tattoo conventions hosted in Green Bay since the 1980s.

Tattoos by Rick is open Monday through Saturday, but Harnowski is there on Sundays, too, accommodating people from out of town or finishing up a job. He works seven days a week, but he’s famous for saying, “I’m here eight days a week.”

“Other than my wife (Barb) and our home, I basically live here and then home. Here and home. I really don’t have any hobbies. This is it.”

The father of three (his third son, Ryan, works at Lambeau Field) and grandfather of six makes do with a vacation every few years and the daily coffee klatch with regulars who drop in to discuss football, solve world problems and listen to stories from veterans. It’s a close-knit group that includes Dan Rosera, the first person to come up to Harnowksi at fourth-grade recess 55 years ago and offer to be his friend.

Bring up retirement and Harnowski is quick to stop you right there.

“Nowhere in sight ... The thought never even entered my mind,” he said. “It feels good when a person leaves here and they’re happy with their tattoo work, and it makes me feel good that’s my work walking out of here. That’s my satisfaction.”

Check out his work

What: “Rick Harnowski: The Needle Has Moved,” a retrospective exhibit celebrating the 50-year career of the Green Bay tattoo artist behind Tattoos by Rick

Read or Share this story: https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/entertainment/2018/10/10/packers-rockers-tattoo-artist-rick-harnowki-marks-50-years-ink-tattoo-artist-rick-harnowski-marks-50/1369871002/